Worries of a Standards 'Backlash' Grow

It sounded fine in theory: Set high standards for what students
should know and be able to do. Give teachers and students the resources
and help they need to reach the standards. Use tests to measure whether
the goals are being met, and encourage results by rewarding success and
penalizing failure.

Warren Simmons of the Annenberg
Institute for School Reform says that too much emphasis has been
placed on tests.
—John Abromowski/Brown University

But as "standards-based reform" plays out around the country, its
uneven and sometimes careless implementation has led even some of its
main proponents to worry about the gap between theory and practice.

"At this point, it would be hard to say I can identify a place
that's got it right, because there are so many ways to do it wrong,"
said Diane Ravitch, a senior research scholar at New York University
and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education.

She and other education leaders worry that the widely publicized
missteps in state after state give critics of the decade-long standards
push plenty of ammunition.

"We have to make sure that the implementation activities of the
standards movement don't kill the movement," said Bob Chase, the
president of the National Education Association, who emphasized that he
remains a supporter of setting higher expectations for students and
schools.

Such concerns echo those of U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W.
Riley, who earlier this year called for a "midcourse review" of where
standards-based school improvement is headed. ("Riley Urges 'Review' of
Standards," March 1, 2000.)

Every state but Iowa has adopted standards in at least some
academic subjects.

Forty-eight states have testing programs designed, in part, to
measure how well students perform on those standards.

Twenty-one states plan to issue overall ratings of their schools
based largely on their students' performance.

At least 18 states have the authority to close, take over, or
overhaul schools that are identified as failing.

But as states move from paper to practice, some have raised the ire
of parents, educators, and students, who either disagree with the
premise behind standards-based reform or have found plenty to protest
in its implementation. In states such as California, Massachusetts,
Michigan, and Ohio, grassroots campaigns are encouraging parents to
keep their children home on test days.

Legal challenges against state testing programs are pending in
Arizona and Louisiana. And in such states as Colorado, Minnesota, and
Virginia, citizens are putting pressure on legislators to rethink state
accountability systems. ("Testing Foes Hope To Stoke
Middle-Class Ire," March 22, 2000.)

While there are at least a dozen such hot spots around the country,
states that have moved forward more carefully over the years appear to
be weathering the storm. Nationally, public support for standards-based
reform remains high, with states such as Texas and North Carolina
beginning to show gains in student achievement.

Ms. Ravitch, who was a leading proponent of high academic standards
during her tenure in the Bush administration and has remained a strong
advocate since then, compared the dissenters to "crickets in the
field"—relatively few in number but making a lot of
noise.

High-Stakes Backlash

But others warn that policymakers should pay heed to the complaints
or court potential disaster. "We're now at the stage where the initial
design of a lot of these policies is coming under heavy scrutiny for
good reason," said Richard F. Elmore, a professor at Harvard
University's graduate school of education. "The redesign part of this
is going to be terribly important to the longer-term political
credibility."

Not surprisingly, the backlash has been strongest in states that
plan to tie decisions on student promotion or graduation to scores on
state tests.

"It seems like all we do is test," said Elise, an English teacher at
a middle school in East Harlem in New York City, where student
promotions, school rankings, and principal appraisals are all tied to
test results.

The 29-year-old teacher, who asked that her last name not be used
because she did not want to hinder her school's mission, said the
pressures have grown so great that, earlier this year, she considered
leaving the profession. "There's so much pressure on the scores, with
the tests coming in April," she said, "that my creative juices have
been stifled."

Around the country, many other educators share her feelings. "I'm
hearing from my members that they're concerned, they're anxious," said
Gerald N. Tirozzi, the executive director of the National Association
of Secondary School Principals and a former assistant education
secretary under President Clinton.

Mr. Chase of the NEA agreed. "School employees feel absolutely
overwhelmed by the pressures to succeed on these assessments," he said.
"It's turning lots of people away from a movement that has a lot of
promise."

Twenty states, including New York, now require students to pass a
test to earn a diploma; that number will increase to 28 within the next
three years. At least half a dozen states plan to tie student promotion
to test results. Such states have embraced what are known as "high
stakes" tests despite virtually unanimous agreement among experts that
no single measure should decide a student's academic fate.

U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., plans to introduce legislation
this week that would require states and districts to use multiple
measures of performance if they are going to use standardized tests to
make high-stakes decisions about students, such as graduation or
promotion.

In Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and elsewhere,
parents and educators also have complained that tests are taking too
much time and are limiting, rather than enriching, the curriculum.

"If they judged all adults by these things, by these standards, I
think adults would be outraged," said Mary O'Brien, the mother of five
school-age sons in the Upper Arlington school district near Columbus,
Ohio. "We used to have this incredibly rich program," she said. But
now, she added, schools have "completely imposed the notion that
testing will be taught to. It's absolutely ridiculous."

"What has happened is that standardized tests have been elevated to
where they are the curriculum," said Ann Lieberman, a senior scholar at
the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an education
think tank based in Palo Alto, Calif. "What we are doing is narrowing
the kinds of activities and learning opportunities for students rather
than broadening and deepening them."

'A Club for Compliance'

One major problem, according to many
observers, is that the accountability aspects of the standards movement
have outpaced efforts to provide schools, teachers, and students with
the capacity to reach the standards.

"To date, it appears that policymakers and politicians are more
interested in using standards as a club for compliance than as a light
toward better teaching and learning," said Hayes Mizell, the director
of the program for student achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation, a New York City-based philanthropy that is active in
education.

On the positive side, he and others point out, standards-based
reform has brought the needs of low-performing students and schools out
of the shadows.

"I think one of the huge successes is what it has done to focus
governmental and public attention on the needs of low-performing
schools and students," said Marc S. Tucker, the president of the
National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based
nonprofit that helps design standards-based education and training
systems.

"Kids all over the country, in states that have been developing
standards-based systems, are getting resources for after-school,
Saturday, and summer school programs they have never gotten before on
an enormous scale," he said. "And this has happened, I think, entirely
because of the standards movement."

In states such as Texas, where the accountability efforts linked to
standards spell out goals not just for a school's overall student
population, but also for specific minority groups, African-American and
Hispanic students have made strong gains. "We can't turn back from
standards-based reform," said Raul Gonzalez, an education policy
analyst at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group
based in Washington. "That's the only way we think that our kids will
be able to become educated and be able to compete in a postsecondary
education world."

But the movement veered off course, he argues, when proponents of
academic standards dropped their commitment to standards for schools,
known as "opportunity to learn" standards, that would have sought to
ensure that youngsters had access to high-quality
instruction.

'Turning Realistic'

"I think, unfortunately, what we have in too many districts and
states is test-driven reform masquerading as standards-based reform,"
said Warren Simmons, the executive director of the Providence,
R.I.-based Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

"In the absence of serious attention and progress in the areas of
capacity-building and resource allocation," he added, "what you're left
with is lots of information about school failure, with people feeling a
lack of support and information about how to address the gaps that are
emerging."

Many wonder how long politicians can sustain a large gap between the
high expectations they've set for students and the percentage of
students meeting those goals.

Hugh B. Price, the president of the National Urban League, warns
that in the absence of a credible plan for helping students achieve
high standards, the public's patience is wearing thin. He also cautions
states against setting standards so high that conscientious
non-college-bound youngsters cannot reach them.

'Still a Lot of Support'

Like many other national leaders interviewed in recent weeks, Mr.
Price does not believe the movement has failed or should be thrown out,
but argues that changes need to be made, and made quickly.

"I think the conversation is turning realistic about standards very
slowly," he said. "The other thing we're seeing is the beginning of
forward motion on some key issues," such as the need to improve teacher
quality and professional development.

"The regret, of course, is that we're not on a war footing in this,"
Mr. Price added.

The lack of standards-related professional development for teachers
and of curriculum and instructional materials aligned with the
standards is often cited as a critical problem for teachers trying to
work with the new standards and tests.

"We still have a lot of places where we don't have the kind of
curriculum frameworks that students and teachers need to go with the
standards," said Sandra Feldman, the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, which has been a strong proponent of high
academic standards. "And we still don't have, in most places,
meaningful professional development to enable teachers to teach to the
new standards. So there's still a lot of work to do, but there's also,
I think, still a lot of support for this direction."

A national survey of AFT members conducted for the union last summer
found that teachers favored a standards-based approach by a ratio of
about 4-to-1. A similar survey done at the same time of principals in
four states found their support for standards nearly universal.

Moreover, teachers in low-income and low-performing schools were
nearly as supportive of standards as those in other schools, while
black and Hispanic teachers were particularly likely to report that
standards had had a positive impact on their schools.

The survey also found that the longer a school had been pursuing
standards-based improvement, the higher the level of teacher
satisfaction. That suggests, in part, that states can overcome initial
backlash if they persevere and make adjustments as needed.

Many proponents of the standards movement point to Texas as the
model of a state that began with relatively low, but realistic,
standards and then ratcheted them up as schools developed greater
capacity to meet them.

"I think that in places where this has been in place a long time,
and it has been implemented in a fairly slow but steady
fashion—Texas, Kentucky, Maryland—there have been
adjustments, but not the kind of major backlash that we're seeing in
states like Massachusetts," said Margaret E. Goertz, the co-director of
the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, a national research
organization based at the University of Pennsylvania.

In contrast, states such as Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia
"did it all at once," she said. "They've put in very high standards and
are moving to hold people accountable for those standards very
quickly."

'A Horrible Idea'

Some opponents of standards-based reform are hoping to use the
current anxiety about high-stakes testing to derail what they view as a
wrong-headed effort.

"It was a horrible idea to begin with," said Alfie Kohn, an
education author who is a prominent critic of the standards movement.
In particular, he asserts that the emphasis on standards encourages a
narrow, back-to-basics curriculum and substitutes a focus on results
for a deeper engagement in learning.

He is hoping that, eventually, teachers' frustration and dismay
about standards will lead to a grassroots revolt similar to what
occurred in Britain, where teachers boycotted the use of new national
exams.

Other critics concede that it's unrealistic to believe that the
current push for standards and accountability will abate any time soon.
But they are hoping that, in the current environment, they can make the
case for a more decentralized accountability system: one that would
give schools and communities more flexibility and that would reduce the
importance of a single state test.

"I think we're now more or less at the high-water mark" when it
comes to testing, said Monty Neill, the executive director of FairTest,
a Cambridge, Mass., watchdog group that strongly opposes most
standardized testing.

Despite such concerns, virtually all of the movement's proponents
say they remain supportive of the concept and believe that there is no
turning back.

"What we're trying to do is difficult and takes time," said Ms.
Ravitch, echoing the sentiments of many other experts. "It's too soon
to say we tried it, and it failed."

"This is just part of the agony of change," she added. "I continue
to think, ultimately, it's going to yield better results than going
backwards."

Vol. 19, Issue 30, Pages 1,12-13

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